


Abandon

by beckling



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Child Abandonment, just hitori and his angst musing on a lot of things, mainly nageki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 01:49:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17757497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckling/pseuds/beckling
Summary: An open letter by someone who knows the word "abandon" very well, left in a mailbox with no address.[Hitori POV; angst warning]





	Abandon

When someone leaves, there's always silence.

 

That's what abandoning someone is. You should recognize it by now, because it always arrives in silence.

 

It was like this, the first time I was abandoned. There was silence all around me; no one would reply to my screams.

 

"Mom! Dad!" 

 

Abandonment is when, no matter how much you scream any words, no one will reply. 

 

Because that's what abandonment is; that's because they abandoned  _ you _ .

 

But after I was abandoned, I was also eventually found.

 

They replied, and so I stopped screaming. People were kind to me. I grew up, I was happy. I forgot about being abandoned, because someone had found me. What mattered was  _ now _ , not yesterday: when you're found after being lost seemingly forever, the pain and the loneliness suddenly cease as if they’d never existed in the first place.

 

The relief and love you’d stopped hoping for far surpass your despair and loneliness. It's almost like a trap, if you think about it. Because of course it's not like you  _ really _ stop being the person who was abandoned. That pain is still within you, somewhere.

 

So they called me Hitori, because they'd found me alone. That was a common name for orphans like me. There was nothing left of my past, so they just went for "Hitori" - though the kanji meant "Sun" and "Bird". They wanted to hide some hope in there, apparently. It's always like this. Behind pain there's always something hidden. That's why I loved living. I loved people. I loved the ones who'd given me my name, I loved those who'd found me and loved me. They'd made me stop screaming for things that were forever lost. "Uzune" was also my last name. The first kanji meant "Bury" and the second "Noise". Unmistakably, all my screaming was buried and dead, just like my parents were dead to me, and I was dead to them. There was nothing to scream about anymore. 

 

That's what you do when you're abandoned. You bury all the noise somewhere and go on. 

 

But of course, only because it’s been filled up somewhere, doesn’t mean it’s disappeared.

 

I was definitely a good kid. I grew up nicely in that beautiful welcoming home filled with beautiful and special people. I learned fast, and I was always eager to do my best - joyful to help, joyful to be part of a family, joyful in life, joyful till the end. Everything was perfect. When someone is lost and then found, they will adapt like this. They become perfectly adaptable, actually. They blend in perfectly, but they shine as an exceptional gemstone to others’ eyes - that’s because they know the alternative. So they're blended in life like in a painting, they're harmonious with whatever the condition may be. 

 

A person like me was perfect, because I'd accepted already what being abandoned meant. It meant giving in to  _ nothingness _ , it meant giving in completely to an infinite amount of resignation and despair. Only then, you're able to do  _ everything _ , to be everything, and at the same time be perfectly balanced in whatever environment you might be found in. That was my reasoning at least.

 

Yes, I was the 'perfect young man'. That's what they'd call me, and they were right, through and through. But that was because I  _ was _ . 

 

I  _ was  _ the perfect young man everyone would want their child to be. They'd even say one day I'd surely get adopted. And applications came in many and many times. 

 

I always refused to go.

 

"I'm happy here," I'd say. Why should I want another family? Just so that they could abandon me again, like the people outside always did? No, I was happy here, since the first moment I was found. I didn’t want to be found again by someone else. Why would someone want me to be their child, if my own parents didn’t want me? If I was perfect, it was only because I had no parents. That was the truth. Changing it would only make me unhappy. My job was here, to protect the other kids who were abandoned by people and by the world - I wanted to be the person to find them and take care of them so that they wouldn't feel alone, ever. I wanted to be the person to catch them from falling into utter nothingness.

 

I wanted to be that person.

 

I wanted to be that perfect person.

 

I wanted to save them.

 

I wanted…

 

I wanted...

 

But I wasn't  _ enough _ . I wasn’t ready. I really wasn’t. I was ready for everything, but I wasn’t ready at all to learn that even my perfection wasn’t enough. 

 

And so I screamed again. Buried up sounds. I could only ask one question:

 

"Why wasn't it enough?"

 

And of course, no answer ever came. 

 

Because when you're abandoned, that's how it always is. There’s always silence.

 

It surrounds you. Nothingness engulfs you again. You’re no one, nothing, nowhere. Unwanted, unneeded, unnecessary, not enough, not enough,  _ not enough _ .

 

_ But then, I was found again. _

 

Nageki coughed.

 

Inside the building, I heard his recognizable cough. I rushed, shoving aside the people who were still trying to reclaim the orphanage. 

 

I would have said: "I found you!" But in reality, it was him who'd found me.

 

Nageki.

 

Nageki, Nageki, Nageki, Nageki.

 

Just- it takes an unimaginable amount of  _ incomprehensible _ luck to lose everything and gain it again, twice. I was lost twice and twice found. And the one who’d found me for the second time, Nageki, meant something far more,  _ more  _ to me. He meant…

 

He meant... not being lost into nothingness, this time forever.

 

Why was he alive? I didn't know, I didn't care what was happening, I couldn’t even begin to understand it. He was here. I would protect him. He wasn't going to die here alone. I took him in my arms - he was going to stay with me.

 

Just when does someone turn evil? Do you ever ask yourself that? I think I know when the window of possibility opens. It's not like you're destined to be. It's just one of the possibilities, really. I know that because I wasn’t evil before. I was a good man, like I told you. And I know when I decided to take that possibility, and turned evil. And so, I think I was evil at a certain point of my life. Just like I'd been the perfect young man, I just as easily became someone everyone could despise.

 

And maybe no one except Nageki knows why it happened, out of the many possibilities in my life. Or were they that many? Honestly, the most unexpected thing had happened, the most surreal and absurd, and yet here I am thinking about what other things could have happened. But these horrible things kept happening. That’s how I started believing it must’ve been my fault. Like it  _ was  _ fated, after all, even though I wanted to assure myself it wasn’t.

 

He tried a lot not to make me end up like that. But I wasn't listening to him anymore after a certain point. He knew I was going through all of this.

 

I'm guilty for what happened to you, Nageki. I'm sorry if for a long time I never listened to you.

 

When you died, I even stopped listening completely.

 

Even though you were that  _ something _ that broke the Silence, the hideous Silence in my head... That only person who’d saved me. Even though you never abandoned me. 

 

Even though you were all that for me... even if you’d never abandoned me, I thought you had. And so I did all the things I did.

 

When I met Kazuaki, he felt vile to me.

 

What did he know about anything? When I smiled at him, I only thought about how lowly and disgusting he was.

 

He talked about solitude. About worthlessness. About people not understanding him.

But he knew  _ nothing _ . Nothing about being alone. Nothing about feeling worthless. Nothing about people not understanding. It was aggravating to no end to hear him talk.

 

He was just like a child. But not the kind of children I'd met at the orphanage and wanted to protect. Those children knew what loneliness was. They knew what worthlessness was. They knew what being misunderstood was. Even at such a cruelly young age. That's why I loved them and wanted to help them grow.

 

But Kazuaki?

 

He wasn’t even a child, and yet he acted more spoiled, more naive and obtuse. It was unforgivable.

 

He didn't deserve to live. He didn't even  _ want  _ to live, and that was my one ticket to ride. I was lucky. To find someone as  _ truly _ worthless as him, had to be true luck - I told myself. If there was something he was right about, despite not even knowing anything about it, was that he was worthless. His life didn't matter. He knew it, and made it so it was true.

 

It made me sick to just see someone like that think he could relate to me to any level.

 

So I was so glad when he died.

 

But then... why...?

 

Like I told you, Nageki, evilness was inside me; I was evil. Like a Shadow, that hatred swallowed me whole and took away everything - all the light that could have ever been inside me - gone. I was constantly, completely, utterly abandoned, when the Shadow was with me. That’s what you are when you’re abandoned forever, and you feel like no one can rescue you anymore.

 

Taking Kazuaki's personality couldn’t have been easier, since there was nothing inside me to oppose a change of identity.

 

And yet...

 

Despite being like that, I still existed somewhere. My desire… was to be with you, Nageki, always.

 

And moreover, you still lived. I knew it.

 

I knew it...

 

That's why I wasn't happy, even if I’d succumbed to Shadow. Sometimes, I would remember and I would feel guilty. Guilty for everything. Everything and anything and more.

 

For Kazuaki, too. For myself.

 

He was vile, he was nothing. But I was vile and I was nothing, too. Killing him was like killing myself. Him committing suicide was like me committing suicide. Betraying him was like betraying myself. Why did he look so much like me? Why did he taste so innocent, even though he was vile? Why did he love me? Why did he love being lied to so much? Why was he so vile? Why, why, why? And even in his despicable,  _ pitiful _ vileness, he wasn’t as vile as me - I knew that. His vileness was candid and see-through, like a piece of unimportant glass made of some generic sand. My vileness was pitch-black and you couldn’t see through it at all. If anything, it reflected what others wanted to see, like some mirror.

 

And through it all...

 

Even if I was nothing. Even among my nothingness, even among my loneliness that knew no bottom-line, I still searched for Nageki,like he was really the beginning and the end of my life.

 

Because…

 

After all the times I'd been abandoned, it couldn't happen for a third time, right? 

 

No, it wouldn't have happened.

 

It just  _ wouldn't _ have.

 

That’s what I believed. That was my faith. Even a sinner like me had one.

 

Because Nageki was my light in the darkness, of course. I couldn’t forget, even if I’d wanted to. My heart pushed forward to him like it was acting on its own. I  _ would _ have found him.

 

And so I did. 

 

"You really... didn't abandon me... all this time..."

 

"I've kept waiting for you."

 

"Nageki..."

 

It was almost incomprehensible - because it was. Whatever I’d heard, whatever he’d told me. But I understood one thing. He hadn't abandoned me - he hadn’t. Finally, what I wanted to know was unfolding in reality, before my eyes. What kind of miracle was this?

 

And even so, even without ever pronouncing any promise, we were bound to each other in a way that was eternal. He’d been waiting for me, too. Lonesome, terribly lonesome, but still patiently loving me. He had never stopped caring for me, in silence, through it all. What horrible fate I’d made him suffer.

 

I was still angry, and for a long time I kept being angry after seeing him again. I couldn’t accept it had ended like that. But eventually, Nageki taught me something, even if I tried hard to ignore his voice.

 

He taught me that even through silence and darkness, something would always stay. A light, a heart, a song. To me, that was Nageki. I’d reached for him, he’d reached for me. The one who would never abandon me, and the one I would never abandon. 

 

I’d wanted to meet him one last time, before parting forever. That was all I ever wanted. A  _ goodbye _ . Not abandonment. My heart would yearn for being complete like that again and again. To discard the void even for just one second and be sealed forever in that certainty that I wasn’t alone. I prayed for that.

 

And so it happened. 

 

Even if you never stop being abandoned, when someone finds you, it’s like you’ve never been. After being lost and found more than once, after having lost and found more than once, after finding the one light that you can say: “this will never fade”, battling against that darkness becomes easier. Though the Shadow never fades completely, the light is still following you.

 

You start having power over those things. Silence and darkness are powerless over you, not the other way around. You’re not their slave anymore, when you find the words and the light that defeat them. I only know this now because Nageki showed me.

 

And so, those phantoms of nothing  _ stay _ nothing, and you become that  _ something _ that basks in the light that they don’t have and that they run away from.

 

Because from to abandoning yourself and to be abandoned, the road goes to finding yourself and being found. 

  
This letter is to you, Nageki, who taught me all these things. Even though there’s no hands I can give it to, I know you will read this, because you always read my heart. Thank you for everything. But most of all thank you for teaching me another meaning of the word ‘abandon’, one I’m not afraid of: the carefree feeling of letting go, knowing you  _ will  _ be found again.


End file.
